The move comes as part of a broader firm expansion. With the addition of Valenti, who will be based in New York, PJ Solomon has more than doubled its managing director count since the firm entered into a strategic partnership with Natixis in June 2016.
“Over the past three years, we have expanded our franchise from a retail and media-focused investment bank to one that now serves clients across eight industry verticals,” said Marc Cooper, chief executive officer of PJ Solomon.
“Our differentiator continues to be unmatched industry knowledge in the sectors we cover, and we believe Joe exemplifies this with his extensive experience in telecom infrastructure. The synergies between his group and Natixis’ strong presence in financing the sector, as well as with our existing banking capabilities in media and infrastructure, will generate great value for clients.”
Valenti joins from Barclays Capital, where he most recently served as managing director and head of Americas Telecom. He was responsible for coverage of large cap telecom, tower, data centre and fibre infrastructure companies.
“PJ Solomon is very unique in that it offers the collaborative and entrepreneurial culture of a boutique, along with the global reach of a much larger institution through its partnership with Natixis,” said Valenti. “The firm has added a number of top-notch bankers to its platform over the past few years and I look forward to working with them to expand the firm to better serve clients.”
Valenti has advised on a number of notable transactions, including, among others: the sale of Datapipe to Rackspace; the sale of KIO Networks’ fibre assets to American Tower; the acquisition of Vodafone’s 45% stake in Verizon Wireless by Verizon; the sale of Cologix to Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners; the sale of Telx to Digital Realty; the acquisition of Earthlink by Windstream; the sale of Telecity to Equinix; and the acquisition of AboveNet by Zayo.
